NAS vs. Windows PCs....

[drjones]

Alright. So here’s what I’m thinking. I wanted to get some final feedback & then I’m going to buy parts.

Below is the config I’ve dreamt up for my main NAS (as opposed to the crashplan destination box I’m also going to build for an off-site backup)

I’m going to run Plex, have a lot of ISO, high-end MKV & other files, so I’d rather err on the side of too much power. Usually it’s just me streaming a movie to my iPad or something, but on occasion we’ll run two streams.

CPU: Intel i5
RAM: 8GB
Mobo: Unsure, any recommendations for a solid unit with at least 6 SATA ports? I’m thinking an intel board?

Hard drive: I’m thinking of using WD Red drives for each. What do you think? Could I use a WD Red to run the OS on as well? I’ve seen so many drives fail lately, I’d be willing to pay a little more if the WD Reds would be more robust. On amazon, a WD Green 3TB is $125, the Red is $149, so not a huge difference.

I’m strongly considering having the OS on its own disk, not sure if I want to also store any stuff on the OS disk, or leave it plain so that if it crashes or dies for any reason, I don’t have to worry about any data, just reinstalling the OS.

Likewise, I do not think I want to bother with any sort of RAID; I think I want to dedicate a disk to each media/file type. If the disk dies, I restore that content from one of my two backups.

Separate 3TB for movies.

Separate 3TB disk for music.

Separate 3TB disk for random files & pictures.

Each disk/share will be backed up via Cobian to a corresponding USB drive, or perhaps to one of my Netgear NAS.

The entire device contents will be backed up to a remote PC via crashplan.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Do you think I’d be better off going with a barebones kit from TigerDirect, or just buying each part on Amazon?

 

[drpcfix]

I vote you save yourself a lot of trouble and get a synology

If you build your own RAID, you have to also learn how to deal with recovery when a drive fails.

You will lose a drive in the first couple years, do you want to be checking backup status all the time - or just let synology take care of you?

I did my own for years, got burned too many times with the backups failing to run.. Eventually, when I could afford it, I got a synology and never looked back.

 

[drjones]

I vote you save yourself a lot of trouble and get a synology

If you build your own RAID, you have to also learn how to deal with recovery when a drive fails.

You will lose a drive in the first couple years, do you want to be checking backup status all the time - or just let synology take care of you?

I did my own for years, got burned too many times with the backups failing to run.. Eventually, when I could afford it, I got a synology and never looked back.

I was very strongly looking at Synology, but cannot get a clear picture of how the offsite backup to another Synology works. There is no clear name for it - Shared folder sync, network backup, business backup - nor can I get a clear picture of how reliable it is.

With Cobian, I *know* it works, and it will email me logs.

With CrashPlan, I *know* it works, and it will email me logs/status updates. Besides, with any NAS you still need to check backups periodically.

The synology I'd want is close to $1k each - *without drives* I can build up a local NAS + offsite machine for a CrashPlan destination for probably under $1k easy, total for everything.

The way I'm going to build this box, the loss of any one disk won't be too big a deal:

- I'm going to have the OS on a dedicated disk and will probably use Acronis to image it daily/weekly. If the disk dies, I buy a new one, re-image it and I'm back up and running in no time.

- If a data disk dies (say the one containing all my movies) I can restore from my local USB backups, or from the crashplan offsite machine.

I just discovered thanks to another thread that I can use CrystalDisk to run constantly and email me alerts of any health issues with any of the disks in either of my boxes....

 

[drjones]

Alright. So here’s what I’m thinking. I wanted to get some final feedback & then I’m going to buy parts.

Below is the config I’ve dreamt up for my main NAS (as opposed to the crashplan destination box I’m also going to build for an off-site backup)

I’m going to run Plex, have a lot of ISO, high-end MKV & other files, so I’d rather err on the side of too much power. Usually it’s just me streaming a movie to my iPad or something, but on occasion we’ll run two streams.

CPU: Intel i5
RAM: 8GB
Mobo: Unsure, any recommendations for a solid unit with at least 6 SATA ports? I’m thinking an intel board?

Hard drive: I’m thinking of using WD Red drives for each. What do you think? Could I use a WD Red to run the OS on as well? I’ve seen so many drives fail lately, I’d be willing to pay a little more if the WD Reds would be more robust. On amazon, a WD Green 3TB is $125, the Red is $149, so not a huge difference.

I’m strongly considering having the OS on its own disk, not sure if I want to also store any stuff on the OS disk, or leave it plain so that if it crashes or dies for any reason, I don’t have to worry about any data, just reinstalling the OS.

Likewise, I do not think I want to bother with any sort of RAID; I think I want to dedicate a disk to each media/file type. If the disk dies, I restore that content from one of my two backups.

Separate 3TB for movies.

Separate 3TB disk for music.

Separate 3TB disk for random files & pictures.

Each disk/share will be backed up via Cobian to a corresponding USB drive, or perhaps to one of my Netgear NAS.

The entire device contents will be backed up to a remote PC via crashplan.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Do you think I’d be better off going with a barebones kit from TigerDirect, or just buying each part on Amazon?

Quick update:

I got all the parts as outlined above and built it last Friday night.

The build was extremely smooth & easy - no BSOD or hiccups of any sort; assembled the whole thing, it fired right up the first time, loaded Win7 from my USB stick inside of maybe 15 minutes....and it's not even an SSD!

As I planned, I've got 3x separate internal 3TB drives; one dedicated for movies/music videos, one for photos & music, and another that will be backups/software installers, general junk storage. The OS is on its own dedicated 1TB drive - it was $10 more than a 500GB, so what the heck.

Each internal drive backs up to an external USB 3.0 3TB drive....the mobo I got supports up to 10x USB 3.0 ports; has 6 on the back alone! USB 3.0 is pretty slick; in real life, using cobian to backup movies & music, it moves stuff at about 1GB per minute, roughly.

The other PC that is going to be my offsite is humming along fine with a 500GB OS drive and 4TB drive to store the CrashPlan backups...obviously I'm waiting for all my stuff to get transferred to my new NAS/server, then backed up to crashplan over my LAN before I move it offsite.

I'm definitely more pleased than I could have imagined with Plex - if you don't have it / haven't seen it, you *have* to check it out. As I load movies into the specified directory, it automatically pulls metadata from the internetz and presents your movies in a beautiful format with cover art, a synopsis, even a link to the trailer. Their iOS apps are just stunning.

I really can't believe it's FREE. Only the iOS app was like $5.

It is sooooooooooo freakin' cool....just for the heck of it, I tested out the streaming while I was at a clients earlier....worked *extremely* well....so now I can view all my movies on this home media server from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

Overall, so far so good. It is SO nice to have music back again....I had stored all my mp3s/iTunes library on my Duo that died, so I've been living in silence for like a month. :crying:

Switching between tracks in iTunes is now far quicker than when the files resided on the Duo. It better be now that it's running on like $1k worth of hardware! :supergrin:

More than anything, it's fantastic to have all my stuff centralized (was scattered among 2x NAS before) and BACKED UP multiple ways, via RELIABLE software solutions; I've used Cobian a lot and it's great, same with Crashplan.

Additionally, I'm going to throw another 3TB drive into an old PC I've got, and load BitTorrent Sync onto it and this new media server and have that as a third backup medium.

So, overall I'm really happy with this box & my ideas in building it.

 

[smashedbotatos]

My home Server is pretty similar. Except I run Ubuntu Server. I built it with a cheapo AMD A6, 8 GB of ram, and a PCI Express Raid card. I have 320GB WD black I bought prior to this project and never used, as my OS disk. Then two 2TB drives one mounted as /srv and the other as /home

I back up to 3 different External USB 3.0 drives with rdiff.

In my /srv mount is where I keep music, pictures, software installers, my ftp, and my publichtml.

Everyone has their own /home shared through NFS and SAMBA on my LAN. So when they boot up to Mint or Ubuntu it is automatically mounted as their /home folder and their profile/data is loaded. Their personal Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, etc.

It also logs my weather station and reports it to wunderground and generates a webpage with all the weather info on it for the local network.

It runs PLEX for the mobile devices, and PS3Mediaserver for the Xbox and PS3. The latter transcodes movies on the fly.

I also have a torrent server Transmission for downloading my Linux distros automatically via RSS feeds.

My PXE server, PXE-Dust, also resides on this Server with all my bootable IT tools. ScreenConnect is hosted on it. PCRT is hosted on it. Also Apache2 Web Server with Joomla that mirrors my actual hosting account.

I also have 3 IP Cams that record motion to it with a program called motion. During the spring/summer I use one cam to timelapse my garden the entire season.

I also host my Kaspersky, and AVG, AV Updates on it. Hopefully adding more soon.

It does all of this with out skipping a beat. I stream HD movies in my format 2 or 3 at a time sometimes to Xboxs or the PS3 in different rooms with no issue at all. I can't stress how much my server has really made things simpler in my home/shop. My home is my shop too. It really beats the days of having an always on "Server" Windows 2000 Pro box.

I wish you the best in this endeavor and hope you too have them same luck as I have.

 

[drjones]

Yes, I've had a ReadyNAS Duo for several years and also an Ultra 6.

I've had a variety of troubling issues with several different ReadyNAS that I have installed, so that spurred my decision to build my own device.

In any case, this new system is so much faster, more powerful, flexible and enjoyable than ReadyNAS, it's not even funny.....